


leaden skies

by WolfOfAnsbach



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Blood and Violence, Gen, Holocaust, War, World War II, very dark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22041502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfOfAnsbach/pseuds/WolfOfAnsbach
Summary: In Poland, in old Galicia, in the years before the last war, there was once a little shtetl called Taykh Taykh. This is the story of its final days.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	leaden skies

**Author's Note:**

> This is, of course, based on stirringsofconsciousness' great fics 'as the good book says' and 'coming to Amerika'. She was also nice enough to help me with some phrases and names and whatnot. I strongly suggest you check out, and read those stories first (they're very short). This will make more sense and probably have more impact, that way. 
> 
> This is not quite set in the same universe, but in a very similar one. The primary difference is I've moved the setting forward by about ten years. So, instead of leaving Europe c.1908, Berte and Krugkoppe left c.1918. Maybe instead of narrowly missing the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, Berte was caught up in the first Red Scare (1918-1920, roughly). You get the idea. Everything else is analogous. 
> 
> I'm sure you figured from the tags, but considering the setting this is naturally going to be a very grim story. I've tried to keep from being gratuitous, but obviously one cannot write a story set on the Eastern Front in the midst of the Holocaust without much violence (nor should one). Be warned.

“For Christ’s sake, Perle! Does the place even have a post office? A general store? _Telephone lines_?” 

“No,” Perle answers. “But it’s not being bombed to hell by the Germans. I think that’s enough for right now.” 

Karolina huffs, and runs her hands through her red hair. Perle watches her. Her sister-in-law is stubborn as an ox. But she’ll see reason. Hopefully. And hopefully before Hitler’s men are tramping through Warsaw.

Taykh Taykh is a few hours’ journey from the capital by train. But of course, no trains are running now, as all of poor Poland’s available rolling stock is appropriated for the hopeless fight against the German invaders. It will be perhaps a few hours more by car. But that is in normal circumstances. Now the roads will be clogged to the point of stoppage by masses of refugees with the same thought as Perle and her family--flight. 

Jan puts a hand on his sister’s shoulder, and does not say a word. His face is pallid, more than usual. His right arm hangs in a sling. The _niemiecka_ bullet had not shattered bone, only cut through the muscle of his bicep. They are all hopeful of recovery. And he is still wearing his uniform--a captain in the Polish Army. What’s more, it is still stained with blood and dust. 

Perhaps that will ease their passage. A wounded soldier conducting his terrified wife and sister to safety ought to be given priority, no? Of course, he is a deserter, and liable to be shot for that. But no gendarme or policeman they encounter on their way need know it. 

(The Germans had tanks, Jan had said. And warplanes. And machine guns. And what did they have? Was he supposed to die for a dying country?) 

Anyhow, all recedes into irrelevance before the all-important need to be out of Warsaw before the Germans arrive. 

They are in agreement, except for Karolina’s lingering reluctance to retire into some ‘bucolic stupor’ as she puts it. A woman of her station is accustomed to certain _comforts_ unavailable in dirt-poor little _shtetls_. 

“Maybe the Germans will not be so bad,” she avers. “They were not so bad in 1918, when we were young, remember? Certainly more civilized sorts than the Russians!” 

“Those Germans were not Nazis,” Perle answers. Instinctively, she reaches out for the hands of her little ones, as she’s had to do so often in these past months. But she clutches at air, and twin waves of grief and relief wash over her. Her children are gone, and her heart is broken, but thank God, thank _God_ that they are. 

In the end, Karolina thinks of her sister-in-law (and, after all these years, friend).

“Fine. Let us go. But I am _taking_ my toiletries.” 

Jan shakes his head but says nothing. He knows better by now.

The journey _is_ eased by Jan’s uniform, as Perle had guessed, but not by much. 

“Go on ahead, _Pan_ Captain,” says a policeman at a bridge checkpoint, as he holds back the rest of the crowd. 

Jan nods his thanks and ushers Karolina and Perle across the bridge. 

Yet ten hours later they find themselves tramping southeast, on foot, down a long stretch of country highway, mingled with a column of refugees. The car has broken down, naturally. 

At one point, well-bred Karolina is so overcome by the necessary physical exertion that she demands her brother carry her (at least, she soon gets over that particular bout of histrionics). Jan gets to talking with another fellow in a Polish uniform. A corporal. 

“You see their tanks?” the corporal asks. 

Jan just crosses himself and nods. 

“Christ almighty, we’re fucked,” the corporal says. Then he manages a weak smile and follows it up with; “well, at least, maybe the Germans will clear out all the fucking _żydków_ , eh?”

Jan clams up. Karolina’s face goes blank.

Perle’s stomach turns. She thinks of her children. How frightened they must be without her. On a ship, alone. Off to a country they’ve never seen, to people they don’t know. God, they must need a hug. A fairy tale with a fine ending.

But then--they are _safe_. And whatever happens to her, here, that is what matters. 

Another hour of trekking along, and there is a strange buzzing in the air. The refugees look around, bewildered. 

The plane crests the horizon gracefully a minute letter, flashing prettily in the setting sun. 

“One of ours?” someone asks, hopefully. 

“It’s German!” comes the panicked shriek.

The refugees scatter. The Stuka banks, then turns, directly along the road. The pilot dips his aircraft’s nose. Perle throws herself to the ground at the side of the highway. Karolina falls down alongside her, hands over her head. Jan throws himself over them, as if it would do anything.

When he has come within a few hundred feet of the earth, the pilot lets loose with his machine guns. Perle wishes, instantly, she’d kept her head down, and never learned what weapons meant to mow down soldiers do to bewildered peasants and panic-stricken children. The plane dives so low she can see into the cockpit, and see the face of the pilot, and see the sun reflect on his goggles. The guns rip up earth, and rip up people. They fly apart almost like wet paper. And when he’s satisfied with his carnage, and turns back up into the sky and soars off, the road is _red_. 

Some are not recognizable as human, anymore. The less fortunate ones are still alive. What remains of them, anyhow. 

The red road behind them, they continue their trek, while the wailing of newly-made orphans and widows rings in the crisp country air. 

What else is there to do? 

* * *

Avrum lines up the last nail and brings down the hammer for the last time. He steps back. It is good work he’s done. It’s a bookshelf, a very fancy one with fine, sanded down wood, and carved feet, and everything. A personal commission from Hyram himself, who’s been buying a lot more, both from Freyde and his son, and from every other artisan or merchant in town. Avrum suspects he is simply lonely, ever since Velvela left. 

“It’s done,” Avrum says to his father. “I’ll go take it to Hyram, if you please.”

Freyde smiles and inclines his head.

“Good work. Good as _my_ best, at least.”

They both know that’s not true, but Avrum takes his father’s compliment. 

He delivers the new bookshelf to Hyram in a horse cart, pushing it up the slope to the fine house in the finer field, stocked with the dozens of head of cattle that everyone in Taykh Taykh, and even in the surrounding Ukrainian hamlets, is so envious of. 

“Ah, very nice work, very nice work,” Hyram says, running a hand down the bookshelf’s smoothed out wood. “You’ve outdone yourself, young Avrum.”

He still calls him ‘young Avrum’, though he is nearing thirty-five, now. He supposes the man always will. 

Hyram gives him the _złoty_ he’s earned. 

“A toast, to the craftsman’s son,” Hyram suggests, and Avrum indulges him. 

Hyram is the only man in town with a radio, and as they speak, it crackles, and then a voice awash in static says: “Warsaw fallen--” before it cuts out again.

“So that’s it, then,” Avrum says, a bolt of fear in his gut. “The Germans are coming.” 

“Oh, I’d not worry about it,” Hyram says. “They were here before, you remember. Not so bad.” 

Of course, the Kaiser for all his faults had not pledged himself to the extirpation of European Jewry. But Avrum leaves that unsaid. 

Ambling back into town, he finds the sick feeling in his gut does not dissipate. He thanks God he is too old to be called up to fight (not that it seems to matter, now that Poland is all but fallen). The last war was enough. Two years in Austrian uniform was enough to last him a lifetime.

The way he saw it, statesmen ought to settle their business among themselves, and leave common folk out of it. 

On his way home, something stops him. Or someone. Or several someones, as a matter of fact. A trio of strangers comes shambling up the road, dirty and clearly exhausted. Two women and a man, still in uniform. All probably about his age.

Half of Taykh Taykh seems to have turned out to watch. They follow the strangers with some suspicion--it always does to be wary. 

But Avrum figures they are just refugees, fleeing the Germans in the west. And the decent thing to do would be to offer them a drink of water and something to eat.

They come nearer. One of the women is blonde, and there is something vaguely nostalgic in her face. When she sees Avrum, her eyes pop. She rushes towards him. He braces himself, confused. 

The blonde pulls him into a reluctantly reciprocated embrace. When she pulls back and looks into his eyes, face streaked with filth, she beams and says: “you don’t recognize me?”

“I--” and then it hits him. “Perle?” 

She soon introduces her husband--the _goyische_ boy she had so scandalously eloped with all those years ago--and her husband’s sister, who Avrum is soon to learn, is a real firebrand. He ushers them into his father’s house, where they gratefully collapse at the dinner table.

Miriam has made _kugel_ , and she parcels it out to her guests. Then she sits beside her husband, and they clasp hands, as they do, still very much in love. Freyde has grown older, as men do, and there is not as much strength in his arms and back as their once was. But there is still a real vitality to him, as he leans in to hear his forlorn visitors’ tale. 

“You are welcome to stay, as long as you need,” Freyde says. 

Jan inclines his head in thanks. 

Then the door flies open. In storm Herschel the cooper and his wife, Alina. 

“I can’t believe this! I _cannot_ believe this!”

Jan and Perle stiffen up. It is not clear whether Alina is exclaiming in anger or elation. 

“Hello, _muter_ ,” Perle says weakly. 

“ _Pani_ ,” Jan says, and bows his head.

She stabs an accusing finger at him. 

“Don’t you ‘ _pani’_ me you little bastard,” she spits, as if he were still the young boy her daughter had run off with. He blinks, and indeed looks a bit afraid. German bullets are one thing, this is another. 

But then Alina embraces Perle, weeping, and it becomes clear she’s elated more than she is angry. 

An hour later, Krugkoppe’s younger sister, Jael drops by, having heard her vanished sister-in-law’s sister is in town. She’s a woman of thirty, now, but still full of questions, and still hard to keep in one spot. 

“Have you heard from Krugkoppe, lately?” Jael asks. “Berte?”

“Not since the summer,” Perle, shakes her head. “When I sent--” she chokes up at the thought of her children, and thinks she would cut out her own heart just to hold them again for a single moment. “My babies are--” then, more to herself than anyone else in the room. “They’re safe.” 

“My grandchildren?” Alina asks, with tears in her eyes. 

“They’re beautiful,” Perle replies, with tears of her own. And she produces a picture as proof. And Alina wipes her cheeks and praises God that they’re safe.

Jan rubs Perle’s back. 

“You all know what’s happened, right?” Karolina demands, cutting in. “That the Germans are coming? That Poland’s lost the war?”

“Yes,” Miriam says, gravely. “We know.” 

A tense chill pervades Taykh Taykh, as its people wait for the arrival of Hitler’s troops. 

But they never come. 

Because only some weeks after the German assault, the Bolsheviks cross the Polish border from the east, making good on their secret pact with the _Führer_. Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany have agreed to divide Poland between themselves, as Prussia and Russia have done so many times before. Galicia, and with it, Taykh Taykh falls squarely on Stalin’s side of the demarcation line.

So in late September, as the leaves begin to tumble from the trees, it is not the grim-faced men in grey who stream in from the west. Instead, red soldiers roll in from the east, gazing down from atop brutal-looking tanks. 

A wave of relief breaks over the village. It is not that they are at all eager to become subjects of Moscow--but for a Jew, surely it is better to be under Stalin than Hitler? 

As a company of red cavalry canters through the village square, the people of Taykh Taykh turn out to cheer them, waving little scarlet rags. 

Jael presents a bolshevik cavalryman with the traditional gift of bread and salt. The man smiles graciously and accepts it. Everyone breathes a little easier.

“I never in a thousand years thought the words would leave my mouth,” says Kreindel, Berte’s once upon a time close friend. “But thank _God_ , it’s the Russians.”

The honeymoon period does not last long. 

Taykh Taykh’s gentile neighbors watch, with disgust.

“You heard how the _zhidy_ in Taykh Taykh opened the gates for the reds? Fucking typical.”

* * *

Jael finds herself sticking close to Perle. She has not seen her in more than twenty years, and it’s not as if they knew each other well when they were so young. But she’s the closest thing this side of the Atlantic to Berte, and Berte is the closest thing to Krugkoppe, of whom she’s had nothing but letters for so long. 

And frankly, she feels bad for the poor woman. Lost her children. Lost her home. Jael visits her often at the Herschel’s house, where relations between herself and her estranged parents have somewhat thawed. 

“You see,” Perle tells her one day, some days into 1940, as they sit on the stoop. She shows her a picture, sent from America. It’s a bit yellowed now, but she can see Berte and Krugroppe clinging to each other as if for dear life, smiling so wide their heads might split. And behind them, Lady Liberty stabs up into the sky. “They are happy. My children will be happy with them,” she says, more to herself than to Jael.

But Jael says, of course. 

Then Kreindel comes running up the road. 

“Have you heard?” he calls. Presumably, he is looking for Avrum.

“Heard?” Perle asks.

“They have arrested him! Old man Hyram!”

“Wh--” Jael stands. “Who?”

“The bolsheviks! The reds!”

Taykh Taykh gathers in the town square just in time to see a squad of black-jacketed commissars bundle Hyram into a dark, rumbling van. He does not bother to resist. Following him come a handful of others. A few shopkeeps. A few smallholders from outside of town. And then comes Reb Reuven. 

Jael’s first thought is that it must be odd for Perle to see Reuven like this--a teacher of Torah. Come far from the roguish young blade he had been when she had last seen this town. 

But flickers of that bold youth come through as the NKVD haul him towards the truck. He is still broad-shouldered, there is still strength in him, and he kicks and fights.

“Get off of me! You damned reds! Damned Russians!” 

The crowd is stupefied. And the commissars make certain to flash the pistols at their hips, lest anyone feel the hero. 

Reuven, hands bound, is tossed into the van, and that is the last they see of him. 

Many among the assembled villagers mutter prayers and exclaim in dismay. Alone among the crowd, Jan and Karolina cross themselves. 

One of the NKVD men on horseback struts up and down the square, clearly enjoying the spectacle.

“See! We come to liberate you from the slavery of the landlords and priests!” He shouts in Ukrainian, which half the village cannot even understand. He wheels his snorting horse around and drives it towards the crowd, which recoils in fright. The commissar grins with satisfaction. “You are free.” 

So ends the honeymoon period with their Bolshevik ‘liberators’. 

“Jan,” Karolina barks, as soon as they return to Herschel’s house. “You must burn your uniform.” 

He balks.

“She is right,” Perle says, eyes wild. The terror of losing her husband _along_ with her children is too much. “You know if the Bolsheviks find it--if they discover you were a soldier, an _officer_ …”

It wounds his pride. He fought the bolsheviks before Warsaw when he was not yet 18. His fathers marched to Moscow with Napoleon and rode to the salvation of Vienna with the winged hussars. But the pleading of his wife and sister break through, and he burns it to a crisp in the hearth, eyes flickering sadly.

It does not save him in the end. 

The NKVD comes back a week later, this time to the Ukrainian settlements to the immediate west of Taykh Taykh. The Jews watch as the dark vans--the ‘Black Ravens’--trundle through town, and then return hours later, filled to capacity with prisoners. They are taken into the dark forests. 

Gunshots ring out for the better part of two days.

Later, the rumor spreads that the Bolsheviks have shot some 300, buried them in the woods. 

“Goddamned _zhidy_ ,” the Ukrainians hiss. “They brought the reds in. They’ve done this.” 

Two weeks later, the NKVD comes again. 

Herschel’s household is awoken by a thunderous knock at the door. It is Jan who answers the door. He did not burn his soldier’s cap, blazoned with the Polish eagle, and he wears it with pride as he greets the two scowling commissars.

The rest of the house springs awake and to the door. 

“You are Jan Brzezinki?” asks one of the NKVD men, a bulldog-faced fellow, fingers darkened with nicotine. His comrade looks a bit more elegant, glasses perched on a roman nose, hands on his hips. “Captain of the Polish Army, 18th Pomeranian Uhlans?” 

Jan holds his head up. He says nothing and salutes. They see the white eagle blazoned on his cap and their scowls deepen.

“Right. Let’s go.”

One of the commissars grips him by the arm.

“No!” Karolina flings herself at the men. He holds her back with one arm. She claws at him, vicious, red hair whirling.

“Get off me, you Polish cunt!” snarls the NKVD man. He slaps her, hard, and she sprawls to the ground. Her cheek is split open. Perle rushes to help her. Herschel and Alina watch in horror. 

Now Jan’s face is alight with fury. He swings. Strikes the commissar square in the face. His nose crunches. The other bolshevik reels. Jan breaks loose, but then the first commissar hits him with an uppercut to the chest. Then clubs him with the grip of his pistol. Clubs him again. Jan is forced to the ground, and they drag him towards the door. “Come on, Polish dog!” 

“Please,” Perle sobs. “Please, he’s done nothing. He--” 

Commissar Broken-Nose draws his revolver, and holds it an inch from Perle’s face. She gasps and whimpers.

“I didn’t ask you to open your mouth, bitch.” 

They drag Jan out into the street, where the whole shtetl seems to have awoken to the commotion. Karolina flings herself at the bolshevik one more time. He brushes her aside again. And he kicks her in the stomach, and she sinks to the ground, gasping for air. 

Commissar Broken-Nose kicks Jan one more time in the ribs. “For my nose, you cocksucker,” he spits. 

And then they march him off, into the waiting black raven, its engine already humming and growling. 

And then he is gone, forever.

Karolina and Perle hold each other, weeping. Herschel holds his wife. 

Avrum comes running up from down the street, and Perle wonders if he, with his prodigious strength, could have fought them off. Not that it matters now. 

“What happened?” he demands.

The two women can hardly answer.

“They--” Karolina chokes out.

“He’s gone,” Perle manages to say.

Avrum’s face falls. He looks down the road, where the commissars and Jan have long disappeared into their grim ‘black raven’ of a van. He balls his fists up, powerless.

“I’m sorry.”

As for Jan, he will never see his wife or his sister again, nor his children across the sea. For him, there awaits only a quiet grave in a dark eastern forest called Katyn.

* * *

Perle can hardly eat for the next two weeks, and becomes terribly thin.

“Perle, darling,” Alina tries. “You must _eat_. Just a bite.”

She does not respond. 

Karolina deals with her grief in a different way, not sleeping, pacing at all hours, muttering ‘damned bolsheviks, damned murderers’. Sometimes she disappears into the forest for hours at a time and then returns, with nary a word.

The gloom of the red occupation settles over Taykh Taykh, and over what was once eastern Poland. “It is still better than Hitler,” the Jews tell themselves. But of course, losing one eye is better than losing both. 

Life goes on.

The Ukrainian peasants surrounding the shtetl on all sides are hardly moved by the fact that the Jews, too, have had loved ones torn from them in the night by Stalin’s henchmen. They remember only Jews cheering when the Red Army marched in. And they will not forget that narrow memory. 

Avrum does what he can to help Taykh Taykh stay together, best he can. 

He goes door to door, asking if folks need help with any chores, or really, need anything done for them at all. Sometimes, Jael comes with him. 

One evening, she asks: “how do you think Krugkoppe is doing? In Amerika?”

“In Amerika?” Avrum scoffs. “He’s fine! I bet he’s rich soon.”

“Yes,” Jael says. “I’d bet.” She waits. Then says: “maybe one day, when all this is over, we can go and visit them. You know? Me, you, Perle, even Karolina.”

“We’ll have to save up some money,” Avrum says.

“Well,” Jael smiles. “Let’s start now, eh?”

The grief of Perle and Karolina becomes a numb, grey thing. They sit together often, reading or sewing (and Karolina _hates_ sewing). Sometimes they bring up Jan. Not often. 

Alina and Herschel slowly soften towards Karolina. In time they begin to think of her almost as a surrogate daughter. When she reaches for a bite of bread before Alina is done with a meal, she will slap her hand away and chide, sweetly, “watch it, woman.” 

And Karolina will say, “the least this miserable place can afford me is a bite of bread.” and they will smile weakly at each other. 

Hyram’s old mansion deteriorates. None dare move in, and the bolsheviks do nothing with it. The synagogue is closed by order of the regional soviet. Faith becomes a private thing. Life goes on. Not easy, but when has it ever been? 

Taykh Taykh survives, as it has always done.

By the summer of 1941, something approaching a new normal has very nearly settled in. 

Then comes the storm.

**Author's Note:**

> I've tried to keep as close to true history here as I can, being no true expert.
> 
> Luftwaffe pilots really did make sport out of strafing civilians during the invasion of Poland. 
> 
> It is also true that many Jews, as well as Ukrainians and Byelorussians, did welcome the Red Army when they marched into eastern Poland. This was both because they naturally had no desire to live under Hitler, and because eastern Poland was in fact majority non-Polish in ethnicity, and these non-Poles had long viewed themselves as oppressed by the Polish state. 
> 
> The NKVD (the Soviet secret police at this time) wasted little time arresting, deporting, and shooting troublesome locals. Much of the resentment for these actions fell upon the Jews thanks to this perceived collaboration, which strengthened the long-standing stereotype of the Jewish bolshevik, coupled with the even older anti-semitism common in the region. 
> 
> When the Nazis marched in and took the region in the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa, they did everything they could to encourage these associations, and pin the murders committed by the NKVD on the Jewish population as a whole. That will play a part in the next chapter.


End file.
